Source: From DICTIONARY OF NORTH CAROLINA BIOGRAPHY edited by William S. Powell. Copyright (c) 1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu

George Henry White (18 Dec. 1852-28 Dec. 1918), lawyer, legislator,
congressman, and racial spokesman, was born near Rosindale in
Bladen County, the son of Wiley F. and Mary White. It is possible
that he was born into slavery, although the evidence on this is
contradictory. He did attend public schools in North Carolina and
received training under D. P. Allen, president of the Whitten
Normal School in Lumberton. In 1876 he was an assistant in charge
of the exhibition mounted by the U.S. Coast Survey at the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. After graduation from Howard
University in 1877, he was principal of the Colored Grade School,
the Presbyterian parochial school, and the State Normal School in
New Bern. He studied law under Judge William J. Clarke and received
a license to practice in North Carolina in 1879.

Entering politics in 1881, he served in the North Carolina House
of Representatives for Craven County. Although an unsuccessful
candidate for the state senate in 1882, he represented the Eighth
District in Congress for the 1885 term and was a member of the
Judiciary, Insane Asylum, and Insurance committees. In 1886 he won
election to a four-year term as district solicitor of the Second
Judicial District. During this period White gained the respect of
many whites and blacks in his district. In addition, he became more
active in religious and fraternal organizations. A founder and
elder of the Ebenezer United Presbyterian Church in New Bern, he
served as grand master of both King Solomon Lodge No. 1 of New Bern
(1899–90) and the Colored Masons of North Carolina
(1892–93).

In 1894 White moved to Tarboro in order to live within the
boundaries of the Second Congressional District. This district,
known as "The Black Second," included nine counties in the coastal
plain area, from Warren and Northampton on the Virginia border to
Lenoir in the south. All the counties had a sizable black
population; four blacks served in the U.S. Congress from the
district between 1872 and 1900.

White lost his party's nomination for the U.S. House in 1894 to
his brother-in-law, Henry Plummer Cheatham, in a bitter fight that
had to be settled finally by the National Republican Congressional
Committee. White was nominated by the Republicans in 1896, and in
an election held under a liberalized election law enacted by the
fusion legislature, he beat the incumbent Democratic
representative, Frederick A. Woodard, 19,332 to 15,378. In 1898
White won reelection, defeating W. E. Fountain in a campaign
dominated by the race issue.

As the only black representative in Congress, White was an
eloquent and vocal spokesman for his race. He is perhaps best known
for his valedictory speech on 29 Jan. 1901 in which he spoke of the
accomplishments of African Americans and of the hope for a better
future. In his first term he was a member of the Agricultural
Committee, and in the 56th Congress (1899-1901) he served on
the District of Columbia Committee. Many of his speeches condemned
the brutal treatment received by Negroes in the South, and White
introduced the first anti-lynching bill in Congress. He supported
local bills and appointed blacks to federal positions (especially
postmasters) in his district.

A successful campaign to disenfranchise blacks plus increasing anti-Negro feeling prompted White not to seek
reelection in 1900. When his term ended in 1901, he and his family
moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law until 1905. He
then went to Philadelphia. While continuing his law practice, he
became involved in banking, founding the first black-managed bank
in Philadelphia. He also established an all-black community in Cape
May County, N.J., called Whitesboro.

White married Fannie B. Randolph in 1879, and they had one
child, Della. In 1886 he married Cora Lina Cherry, the daughter of
Henry C. Cherry, a black politician from Tarboro. They had two
children, Mary A. and George H., Jr.